Clam Chowder Cook-off

Today was our last full day here; we will start back to Highlands tomorrow in order to take Jane Lewis to Asheville on Monday for her Pre-Op and on Tuesday for her surgery.  As the time approaches, everyone is praying that the surgery goes well.  We are also praying for Lizette's recovery from pneumonia and a pulmonary embolism, as well as for Artie for his high blood pressure and Susan for her influenza.  So many prayers.  If all goes well with Jane's surgery and with Bill's kidney stone removal on Thursday, we hope to be back here a week from now.

Since we will be on the road for two days, and then driving back and forth to Asheville next week, we may not have an opportunity to run again for several days.  So we made good use of the clear skies and temperatures in the 40s and ran down to Fort Macon this morning, picking our way through snow and ice remaining in the shady stretches of road.  Martha is up to five miles now and plans to move up to six miles next week; I added some extra distance and logged eight miles, my longest run this year.

This afternoon, we drove over the bridge to Morehead City and then over another bridge to Beaufort, a place we enjoy visiting while we are here.  Snow still lingered here and there in shady places.

Beaufort is such a comfortable little town, walker-friendly, with beautiful old historic homes lining one side of Front Street, and along the waterfront on Taylor's Creek a long boardwalk with unique inns and restaurants.

Our destination was the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, where the annual Clam Chowder Cook-off was being held, a fund-raising event for the N. C. Maritime Museum across the street.  Martha had wisely bought tickets, limited to 100, long before the event.  It filled up quickly with hungry chowder-eaters like ourselves who sample and then judged between four different chowders and four different corn breads.  It was a wonderful event! - friendly people, delicious food, and an interesting venue here in the Watercraft Center which is still in operaiton.

It was hard to choose between them, but we did the best we could, and stuffed our votes into the ballot box on the way out.

Now tonight we see from our balcony a new moon in the western sky, fingernail thin, curved into a bow and resting on its side in a star-speckled sky.

"New moon, drift on

In the generous tropical sky

With your big black sail."